‘Lost London’ – explorations of a dark metropolis, Sheffield Hallam University

‘Lost London’ – explorations of a dark metropolis

Monday 14 – Tuesday 15 June 2010
Sheffield Hallam University

“This interdisciplinary conference engages with the writings of Iain Sinclair. Following his interest in London writers, it proposes a vision of London that concentrates on the marginal, the ‘lost’, and the ‘underground’. It takes an interdisciplinary form spanning the disciplines of history, English, film and architecture.

The London it hopes to explore is an unstable and shifting one, which changes its meanings over time. The chronology is a long one, inviting comparisons across the geographical spaces of London and across disciplinary boundaries.

Drawing on Iain Sinclair‘s preoccupations with space, topography, the cinema of the capital and the lost history of the city, it aims to overturn accepted notions of London through an emphasis on the excluded.

The conference will be held in conjunction with the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, and will open a week-long series of short films about London. These will be a series of films introduced by academic staff from Sheffield Hallam University at the Showroom Cinema.

Iain Sinclair will be present and will deliver a keynote lecture on outsider culture in London and popular film making in the 1960s and 70s.”